At one point, about
300 cars were stuck on Highways 330 and 18 in Big Bear as snow began
piling up from the storm, said California Highway Patrol Officer Marcelo
Llerena. Between 150 and 200 cars were towedoff the road and will have
be picked up later by their owners, he said.

The cold storm from Canada has brought heavy winds and several inches of snow across Southern California.

Wind
advisories were implemented across the Southland, with gusts up to 70
mph predicted in mountain passes from Ventura to Orange and Riverside
counties. Fremont Canyon in Orange County saw winds up to 57 mph, while
Malibu Hills saw gusts up to 70 mph."

The
drivers were stuck on a section of Highway 138 that winds through the
San Bernardino Mountains between Crestline and Silverwood Lake, said San
Bernardino County Fire Department spokeswoman Tracey Martinez.

“Everyone is OK,” Martinez said. “But we need to get those people out of there as quickly as we can.”

Strong winds
were reported from Ventura down to the southern reaches of Orange
County. Fremont Canyon in Orange County saw winds up to 57 mph, while
Malibu Hills saw gusts up to 70 mph.

National Weather Service
meteorologist Greg Martin said the strong winds would continue through
Wednesday morning but drop off in the late afternoon. The snow and light rain are expected to move out by late Wednesday.

"Snow
brought heavy rains that swept through 25 states across the nation, a
state of emergency, over the past 48 hours, paralyzed traffic in more
than 220 road nationally and Olaúaa and municipal, which has
necessitated the intervention of public authoritiesto evacuate the
affected people and decryption isolation. In
contrast, the General Directorate of Civil Protection called that
counted yesterday 5 dead and dozens injured as a result of extreme
weather, citizens and families, "to reduce and abolish unnecessary
movements during these days because of deteriorating weather
conditions."

Authorities are calling on citizens to cancel non-essential movements.

As
snow accumulation led to cut the national road No. 15 link between
Bouira and Tizi Ouzou Strait Tirordh Aghbalou municipality as well as
the National Road No. 30 link between Bouira and Tizi Ouzou, in a place
called Tizi Lincoln mayor Sharig National Road No. 33, which are linked
Petkjdh. According
to the same source, the snow caused the disruption of traffic in the
Sidi Bel Abbes on National Road No. 13 link between Telagh and Daye."...Image of snow clearing from El Bilad. viaIceAgeNow.info

“Today I found this news item from Algeria on the internet,” says Argiris.

“Although translate.google.com is not working perfectly while
translating from Arab to English, I understand that there have been
massive protests by angry civilians who blame their government for not
helping them enough during heavy snowfall.

12/20/14, "Scalise should step down from GOP leadership,"Chicago Tribune Editorial Board"Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La.,the third-ranking Republican in the U.S. House
of Representatives, says he made an innocent mistake in speaking to a
white supremacist conference in 2002. How was he to know that the
European-American Unity and Rights Organization (EURO) was a collection
of racists and neo-Nazis?

"For anyone to suggest that I was involved with a group like that is
insulting and ludicrous," says Scalise, who was a state representative
at the time. "I spoke to any group that called, and there were a lot of
groups calling." Why, he even spoke to the League of Women Voters, even
though its "a pretty liberal group." Scalise says he lacked the staff to
vet organizations like EURO and "was without the advantages of a tool
like Google" because "those tools weren't available back then."

Tuesday,
Speaker John Boehner admitted Scalise "made an error in judgment, and
he was right to acknowledge it was wrong and inappropriate."But Boehner
said he "has my full confidence as our whip" and would remain in that
position.

That's
not good enough. Peter Wehner, who has been an adviser to Mitt Romney's
presidential campaign and an aide to President George W. Bush, said the
obvious on Twitter: "The party of Lincoln shouldn't have as its #3 a
keynoter at a white supremacist convention." Scalise needs to step down
from his leadership post, or House Republicans need to remove him.

His denials are pretty hard to believe. In the first place, Google and other search engines were widely used in 2002. The nature of the group was apparent even to the minor-league Iowa Cubs.
In town to play the New Orleans Zephyrs,they decided to stay at a
different hotel because of the nature of the gathering at the suburban
Best Western Landmark — which publicly disassociated itself from EURO.

In
the second, Scalise didn't need the Internetto know what he was
dealing with. Former Ku Klux Klan leader and Louisiana state legislator
David Duke, who founded EURO, says Scalise was invited by Duke's
campaign manager, Kenny Knight. "Kenny knew Scalise, Scalise knew
Kenny," Duke told The Washington Post. "They were friendly."

Knight
says Scalise accepted the invitation because they were neighbors.
"Steve knew who I was, but I don't think he held it against me," he told
The New Orleans Times-Picayune.

It's pretty clear that Scalise
saw some potential political benefit from hobnobbing with a crowd of
hard-core bigots. In 1999, he had tried to appeal to Duke's supporters
by indicating he shared many of their concerns: "The voters in this
district are smart enough to realize that they need to get behind
someone who not only believes in the issues they care about, but also
can get elected. Duke has proven that he can't get elected, and that's
the first and most important thing."

Electability
was not, and is not, the most important thing about David Duke. His
anti-Semitic, white supremacist beliefs are. Scalise probably doesn't
share those views: Rep. Cedric Richmond, D-La., who is black, said, "I
don't think Steve Scalise has a racist bone in his body." In 2004, when
Duke was considering a race for an open House seat long held by the GOP,
Scalise said, "David Duke is an embarrassment to our district, and his
message of hate only serves to divide us."

But that didn't stop
him from accepting a 2008 campaign contribution from Knight. The trouble
with Scalise is not that he is a racist. It's that he is more than
willing to indulge white bigots and their sentiments when it suits his
political needs.

Earlier this year, he said: "The monopolizing of lands,
deforestation, the appropriation of water, inadequate agro-toxics are
some of the evils that tear man from the land of his birth. Climate
change, the loss of biodiversity and deforestation are already showing
their devastating effects in the great cataclysmswe witness."

Ironically, the pope in separate declarations has spoken out about
the immorality of "income and wealth inequality" and "trickle-down
economics." The radical climate change agenda he has made peace with
would make the poor poorer and income inequality worse.We'd like to hear the pope say this: The science on global cooling,
global warming, climate change — or whatever the left calls it these
days — is unsettled at best.

But if climate change is a threat, the best response is not to
empower heavy-handed and incompetent command-and-control governments to
fight it, but let free people use their wealth, technology, ingenuity
and creativity to solve it. If the corrupt U.N. or Greenpeace is our
salvation,we're all doomed.

Francis recently declared we should be wary of putting a "crude and
naïve trust in those wielding economic power," a clear slap at
capitalism. But surely it's more true of those "wielding economic power"
in government.

Comment: If the Pope wants to help the poor, he should call for the UN to be closed down. Billions of no strings US taxpayer dollars are given to the UN yearly. UN parasites and their equatorial dictator pals get richer while the world's poorest become poorer and more desperate especially in Africa.

----------------------------
.Comment:I have several relatives who consider themselves serious
Catholics. The most important expression of their Catholic faith is
adherence to the radical left agenda.. =================

P.S. Isn't IBD pals with Boehner and McConnell? They've shepherded this AGW thing for decades into the$2 billion dollar a day industryit is today. Each has daily access to microphones and could tell the truth in one or two sentences but won't. It's too big to fail. They just say, "I'm not a scientist."

The assessment – which includes a summary and recommendations by the
UNFCCC Standing Committee on Finance and a technical report by experts –
is the first of assessment reports that puts together information and
data on financial flows supporting emission reductions and adaptation
within countries and via international support.

The assessment also recognizesthe need for understanding the impacts
of climate finance associated with emissions reductions and activities
to boost resilience to climate change....Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC, said:
“Finance will be a crucial key for achieving the internationally-agreed
goal of keeping a global temperature rise under 2 degrees C and sparing
people and the planet from dangerous climate change”.

A graph showing Internet traffic from China accessing Gmail dropped
sharply on Friday, according to Google’s Transparency Report, and has
not returned to normal levels.. “We’ve checked and there’s nothing wrong on our end,” a Singapore-based spokesman for Google told AFP.

Internet users in China were irate on Monday, with many spewing vitriol on Sina Weibo, a Twitter-like microblogging service.

For
the first time since the height of the IRA’s terror campaign, the soldiers are also no longer allowed on sentry duty alone, and are now
accompanied by armed police.

The move to
more secure positions behind gates or railings is a direct response to
attacks such as the murder of Fusilier Lee Rigby and the killing of a
sentry by a lone gunman at the Canadian Parliament two months ago.

But the measures have been described as a ‘retreat’ for the Guards, known the world over for their bearskin caps....

‘The
changes were introducedin response to the Canadian attack and because
there’s been a sharp risein people armed with mobile phones trying to
wind up the sentries and make them lose their temper.’...

He emerges as a complex figure — a half-Jewish cowboy from
Phoenix who believed the government should stay out of our hair. He
thought gays should be allowed in the military and was also pro-choice.My mom had an abortion
in the mid-50’s, before she had me. She was in college, and she wanted
to finish and get a degree and not have a child then. Barry felt it was a
woman’s right to make that choice.

On the other hand, what does it say about the current state of
American politics if Barry Goldwater is held up as a model of social
enlightenment? Many people considered him a bigot because he voted
against the Civil Rights Act of 1964. That was a wart on his career, and he knew it. He was the furthest thing from a bigot there was.

Ben Bradlee calls your grandfather “an unsung hero of Watergate.”Barry didn’t go to Nixon’s funeral. He ended up feeling that
Nixon really cheated the country and lied to the country, and that was
something you just didn’t do in Barry’s book. You don’t lie.

It’s odd to see so many East Coast people praising your
grandfather when he famously said that the U.S. might be better off “if
we could just saw off the Eastern Seaboard and let it float out to sea.”

What you saw is what you got from him.

Are you a Republican?

No,
I’m an independent. My mom is an independent, because she has always
been supportive of initiatives in women’s rights, and so am I. The
Republican Party has shifted so far away from the center that I don’t
know if I can get over there.

It is going to be reissued by Princeton University Press. The
book is the first in Princeton’s series of classic works of American
politics.

Did you always want to be a filmmaker?

I never set out to be a filmmaker. I wanted to tell a story. It’s
a big thing to do when you don’t have the background to do it, but I
was blessed to haveHBO on board from an early stage. They were our
partners on this, 50-50.

How large was your budget?

A little over $750,000, closer to $800,000. I tried to raise my
half, and then I realized I would have to give up too much creative
control, so I just put it up myself.

How do you have that much money?

I don’t. Barry was not materialistic. We were not the Rockefellers, so I refinanced my house to come up with the money.

Do you plan to do another documentary?

There’s nothing that comes to mind. I don’t have enough interesting family members to allow me to do a boxed set."

While looking for substantiation about Hollywood figures who supported Goldwater, I came across the information that he was always pro-choice which I hadn't known. It's been a great misfortune for the country that the conservative agenda and The Republican Party have become identified with the notion that all abortions must be banned. When Reagan was president, it seemed every time he spoke he brought up abortion. It made me sick. I voted for John Anderson in 1980 rather than Reagan.

"I'm here because of the evidence that we're seeing in Cuba
of an extraordinary expansion of free enterprise, the reduction in
government jobs, and more private hiring, all of which is moving in the
right direction," said Donohue, whose chamber is an influential lobbying
group that bills itself as the world’s largest business organization.

"Such
conditions hardly seem an attractive opportunity for any responsible
business leader," said Menendez, a leading Cuban-American voice for
maintaining strict economic sanctions on the one-party state.Donohue and a dozen others including a representative of U.S. commodities
company Cargill [CARG.UL] planned to visit a private auto repair
cooperative and the special development zone in the port of Mariel.
Donohue was due to give a speech at Havana University on Thursday just
before departing.

It was
not known whether he would meet with Raul Castro, who ushered in the
reforms after taking over for his ailing brother Fidel in 2008.

Donohue declined to say whether he expected any U.S. policy change toward Cuba, which Washington has sought to undermine and isolate since the island's 1959 revolution took it down the path of communism."

US President Barack Obama said on Wednesday the US is re-establishing
long-broken diplomatic relations with Cuba - a historic shift that could
revitalise the flow of money and people across the narrow waters that
separate the two nations. .

Cubans welcomed Wednesday's announcement with optimism and a measure of
caution, especially among officials in the Castro Government. .

The shift in US-Cuba policy was the culmination of 18 months of secret talks
between both countries that included a series of meetings in Canada and the
personal involvement of Pope Francis."

Cuba and the United States on Wednesday
agreed to end more than five decades of animosity and re-establish full
diplomatic relations. U.S. President Barack Obama also said he intends
to remove some sanctions against Cuba and work with the U.S. Congress
to end the economic embargo.

"Sometimes people say
Fidel is hard-headed, that the Cuban leaders are hard-headed, but
experience has taught us something important, that we shouldnever give
in on our principles," Castro said outside parliament during a break in
Friday's session."

Anyone hoping to avoid the
wintry conditions on roads today was faced with chaos on parts of the
rail network, with trains to and from King's Cross in London cancelled
all day because of overrunning engineering works.

Shuttle buses were taking passengers to Finsbury Park, where amended
services were due to run north to Leeds, Newcastle and Scotland.

Fallen trees brought down by high winds overnight
were affecting services through Basingstoke, Hastings and Tunbridge
Wells, while over-running engineering works between London Paddington
and Hayes were delaying services on routes to Oxford, Cardiff and
Exeter.

People were hit by trains in Northampton and Gowerton, in Wales, also causing temporary line closures.

“We are rescuing people who are bogged down in snow there," a spokesperson said. That seems to be the biggest area of problems in the UK. We are
seeing higher volumes of calls than we would usually get on a Saturday
this time of year. Some motorists are abandoning their vehicles."

Liverpool's
John Lennon Airport and Leeds Bradford International in Yorkshire
closed while their runways were cleared of snow as a band of wintry
weather crossed the country from Merseyside and north Wales through the
Midlands and Yorkshire.

Both airports were reporting arrivals and
departures resumed as normal on Saturday morning but delays were still
being reported at Manchester Airport. Leek, near the Peak District
in Staffordshire, saw the worst of the snow with 10cm (4 in), the Met
Office said, with Cranwell in Lincolnshire also seeing 7cm (3 in).

Police warned of hazardous conditions last night, especially in Staffordshire and Cheshire, with several roads made impassable....Leicestershire
Police warned of snow causing disruption in the north of the county,
urging people to only travel if "absolutely necessary" and to avoid the
A1, where large vehicles were stuck.

Snow had been predicted to
fall in parts of north Wales, the North West and the Midlands, with a
Met Office Level Three amber cold weather alert in place and a yellow
warning of snow across a large swathe of the UK since yesterday morning....

A spokesperson for the Department for Transport
said: "As winter weather grips some areas of the country we would advise
people intending to travel to check weather and local conditions before
they set out."...